Gernika/Guernica

Seventy years after the bombing of Gernika, artist Anita Glesta transforms a public
space in historic Lower Manhattan by combining the poignant, disembodied voices of
survivors of the Basque village with the searing abstraction of Picasso’s “Guernica,” the
renowned painting that indicts this tragic attack. Glesta’s motion-activated soundsculptures
create a dialogue between individual memories and the iconic anti-war representation, incorporating elements of “Guernica” — a bull’s horn, a foot, a heart — into eight bronze “radios.”

The multimedia, site-specific public art project commemorates the 70th anniversary of the tragic bombing of the Basque town Gernika by Nazi Germany at the behest of General Franco. Glesta’s eight bronze sound-sculptures in the shape of antique radios are installed on planters on the western side of Chase Manhattan Plaza. Each of Glesta’s
sculptures features an element of Pablo Picasso’s iconic “Guernica” painting, and also
contains a motion sensor that, when activated, plays an audio recording of testimony
from a survivor of the Gernika bombing.

The devastation and loss of life of the Gernika attack marked a transformative moment
for the Basque people, much as 9/11 did for New Yorkers. The connections between
loss, survival, and memory and their relationship to artistic representation are at the
heart of Glesta’s work. Its location in Lower Manhattan and Glesta’s personal history
reinforce the link between New York City and Gernika/Guernica.

Anita Glesta has been recording oral memories of the now elderly survivors of the Guernica bombings since 2005. She lived in Northern Spain as a teenager in the 1970s. Four months after 9/11, which she witnessed as a resident of Gateway Towers in Battery Park City, she moved to go to Spain to rekindle her connection to the Basque
country.

Anita Glesta’s work has been exhibited extensively in New York City, beginning in 1984
with a solo show at White Columns Gallery. Her work was shown at the Sculpture Center, the Queens Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and many New York galleries before she moved to Sydney in 1994. Since her return to New York in 2000, Glesta has
created site-specific works in New York, Europe, and Australia. She is currently
commissioned to create a permanent outdoor integrated landscape sculpture for the
Federal Census Bureau Building in Washington, DC, through the General Services
Administration’s Excellence in Art and Architecture program.

This installation is part of Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 18-month exploration on
the theme of “Amnesia: The Spectral Life of Cities” that looks at aspects of urban life that
are forgotten, invisible or obscured in the present. In downtown New York, the
questions of historical trauma, memory and memorialization are at the forefront of any
discussion of rebuilding. Through projects such as this installation, LMCC wants to
connect the individual testimony and memory to the more monumental projects of
memorialization.